Swoon
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A faint.
"She dandled it, and dancet it up and doune, / Not ceasing till she rais'd it from his swoune."
- 2 a spontaneous loss of consciousness caused by insufficient blood to the brain wordnet
- 3 An infatuation.
- 1 To faint, to lose consciousness. literally
"I threw myself down on the island ground, like a dead man, and drowned in desolation swooned away, nor did I return to my senses till next morning, when the sun rose and revived me."
- 2 pass out from weakness, physical or emotional distress due to a loss of blood supply to the brain wordnet
- 3 To be overwhelmed by emotion, especially infatuation. broadly
- 4 To overwhelm with emotion, especially infatuation. transitive
"That plush mustache of yours has completely swooned me!"
- 5 To make a moan, sigh, or some other sound expressing infatuation or affection.
"The girls swooned at the picture of their favorite actor."
Example
More examples"She had no sooner taken it into her hand than, either because she was too quick and heedless, or because the decree of the fairy had so ordained, it ran into her hand, and she fell down in a swoon."
Etymology
From Middle English swoune, swone, from the verb (see below).
From Middle English swounen, swonen (“to faint”), and aswoune (“in a swoon”), both ultimately from Old English ġeswōgen (“insensible, senseless, dead”), past participle of swōgan (“to make a sound, overrun, suffocate”) (compare Old English āswōgan (“to cover over, overcome”)), from Proto-West Germanic *swōgan, from Proto-Germanic *swōganą (“to make a noise”), from Proto-Indo-European *sweh₂gʰ-. Cognates Cognate with German Low German swogen, swögen (“to faint, sigh, groan”), Dutch zwoegen (“to groan, breathe heavily”), dialectal Norwegian søgja (“to whistle, hum, talk loudly”). More at sough.
Related phrases
More for "swoon"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.